Awakening: Dead Forever Book 1 Read Online Free PDF

would knock you out for a while if nothing else. It can be quite painful, trust me.”
    I don’t like it when someone uses the phrase trust me. It usually means they intend to screw me. He swings around and continues into a short hallway. I follow behind, keeping a safe distance, but close enough to make sure this weapon doesn’t miss.
    From the hallway we emerge in a large room on the lower level. Countless shelves fill the space, but no products fill the shelves. Well, unless thick layers of dust could be called a product. A product of something. In one corner is a large roll-up door where trucks might load materials. From the looks of the place, it seems little has been manufactured, delivered, or otherwise processed around here for some time. It’s like a tomb.
    Jared points to the loading door. “We can make our way out over there. Go get it open.”
    “I think you should open it.” I keep a ready finger on the trigger.
    He shrugs. “Okay, if that’s how you want it.” He turns away and walks toward the door before I have a chance to act further. I didn’t even have to threaten him with the rifle, he agreed all on his own. Have I misjudged him? Of course I have. Here’s a guy offering to help, and what am I going to do? Shoot him? No wonder I have no friends.
    As he walks away, the racket upstairs ceases. Did the Bobs give up? This realization is unsettling—if they’re not upstairs tearing the room apart, where are they?
    “Hey, Jared, what happened to the goon patrol?”
    On his way to the loading door, he turns back. “The what?”
    “You know, the guys upstairs. The goons trying to kill me.”
    He laughs. I guess he thinks it’s funny. He continues to the loading door and wrestles with the latch. “Them?” he says, and glances over his shoulder. “They’re not trying to kill you. They were just keeping you busy until I got here.”
    Huh?
    He gets the latch loose, then turns around and grins.
    “I’ll take care of making you dead.”
    * * *
    Chased by a gang of thugs is one thing, an understandably terrifying circumstance. But having someone pretend to help you, only to stab you in the back when you turn around— infuriating!
    Jared has sealed his fate, he will die. If not by this ineffective weapon, then by these murderous hands clamped around his neck. But then, he could be lying about the rifle. He has lied about everything else. At the higher setting, the strange weapon will erase him from existence, and he knows it.
    I target the bastard and squeeze the trigger. The whizzing begins, terribly loud but with some delay. A sizzling beam erupts and instantly strikes, knocking Jared off his feet and crashing into the roll-up door.
    However, the full-powered blast has not vaporized him as I had hoped. At least, not yet. Vicious spasms escalate until his body becomes a tremulous mass of flesh, tortured by intense vibrations, the frequency so rapid he almost appears translucent.
    The spastic vibrations change frequency, getting slower, though he still wiggles like a bowl of gelatin. He struggles up onto one knee, and steadies himself with one hand. The intensity fades and he stands upright, undulating like the reflection in a wavering crazy-house mirror, and I can see him—grinning? Does this torture not hurt? He said it would.
    Still pulsating, he speaks and it sounds funny, like he’s underwater. “That won’t do any good, Carl.” He opens his coat to indicate a small box clipped to his belt. “I have protection.”
    Jared must be a villain, with that idiotic urge to explain everything, that my weapon will do no good, how he’s unbeatable, gloating over the glory of it all. Typical.
    “This is a wave canceller,” he says, holding out the little gadget. “It matches the frequency of that weapon and makes it useless. Too bad you don’t have one.” He laughs like he’s so smart, and I’m so stupid.
    The swell of fury grows—I won’t be laughed at any more than I’ll be